


How Different Can It Be

by Zoadgo



Series: Merry Ficmas! [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery, mention of past torture, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 12:46:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5497559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoadgo/pseuds/Zoadgo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anonymous prompt: <i>“Murphamy fic where the grounders also raped Murphy while torturing him. The group doesn't find out until much later (such as where they are in the current season) due to whatever circumstances. Would love differing POVs (mainly Murphy and Bellamy) with Murphy full of self-loathing and shame and Bellamy trying to be empathetic but also feeling guilty due to sending Murphy out there in the first place.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	How Different Can It Be

Murphy tastes bile on his tongue and blames it on the moonshine, ignoring the fact that he hasn’t really had all that much to drink. He tries to breathe through the nausea and lose himself in the feeling of the other man pressed up against him, lips hungry against Murphy’s skin and hands claiming his body as their own. But the more that Bellamy presses against Murphy, pinning him to the wall, the more that Murphy’s scant dinner threatens to return.

_Come on, Murphy. Calm and cool, just say you’re not feeling it._ But the words won’t come out without dragging masticated food with them. So Murphy goes to lightly push Bellamy away, and next thing he knows he’s standing over him, chest heaving as Bellamy stares at him with a pained expression. 

“Mur? What’s wrong?” Bellamy’s brow is creased, but Murphy can’t do anything to stop his concern. Because his mind is taking over, panting broad stripes of black across Bellamy’s face, threading bones into his clothes. In front of him lies someone different, not the man he trusts and cares about, but an abomination that will do everything it can to shred him to pieces and violate whatever remains.

So Murphy runs. He doesn’t even notice when his mind switches from fight to flight, he just knows that he’s moving away from the trees. He moves into the maze of wreckage, trying desperately to block out that damnable forest that haunts his every moment. His nerves are setting him ablaze, and maybe he’s crying, he can’t quite process sensations enough to be certain right now. He has to hide, somewhere so deep and dark that no one can ever find him. Where they can’t find him.

The ground grows increasingly uneven and treacherous with debris beneath his feet, but he keeps on his blind dash. No matter how many times he stumbles, he keeps on going at breakneck speed. He feels phantom hands on his skin, deep voices laughing in his ears. He swallows down his fear and tastes blood. 

A small space appears, a tiny shelter within the wreckage. Murphy dives and crawls into it quickly, without regard for the shrapnel that shreds his back. The memories that he’d thought had been buried down, so deep that only his sleeping mind could access them, ravage his mind. He feels people touching him, knives cutting into him, ropes shredding his skin as he struggles. He keeps his eyes firmly shut, because he knows what he’ll see if he opens them. Murphy’s body shakes and he grits his teeth, trying to convince himself that it’s not real, but it feels too goddamn solid for him to ignore.

Murphy spits into the earth beneath him repeatedly, desperately attempting to clear the cupric taste from his tongue. The dirt turns into mud, yet the ghost of blood from injures long since healed remains. He doesn’t throw up, which had been his fear just moments ago. God, that felt like years past. He can’t remember what it was like to not be in pain, can’t remember what his own skin feels like, or how time passes, or where he is, or what’s-

“-phy. Murphy. Come on, Murph, it’s me, it’s Bellamy.”

The world snaps back into place painfully, leaving Murphy trembling with tears on his face, clinging to Bellamy. Bellamy, who’s just holding him and whispering to him now that Murphy’s stopped struggling so much. Murphy can’t hear the words, but the soothing tone of the other man’s voice causes him to slowly relax, breathing coming down to a normal rate and heart slowing to the point where the individual beats are recognizable again. When Murphy can stop the tears, he forces himself to gently pull away from Bellamy, much as he doesn’t want to leave that warm and comforting embrace.

Murphy’s eyes stay glued to the ground, afraid and ashamed of himself. Not for lashing out at Bellamy, lord knows he does that on fairly regular occasion, but for being so weak as to completely lose control of himself. He does feel bad for Bellamy, but right now Murphy is busy ripping himself to shreds in his own mind.

“So, you mind telling me what the hell that was?” Bellamy’s voice is the one to break the silence, and Murphy bites his tongue. How can he explain what happened there and not have Bellamy look at him like something broken?

Murphy snorts lightly and rubs his nose, an idle habit that he doesn’t even consciously register half the time. He knows how to make people stop asking questions, but unfortunately it tends to make them hate him as well, so he hopes that Bellamy will drop it.

“Sorry, I freaked out. Won’t happen again.” _Fucking liar._

“Don’t. I deserve better than that.” Murphy grinds his teeth. Of course Bellamy won’t let the topic die, and Murphy knows he’s right, in the end. “Come on, look at me.”

There’s a hint of compassion and an edge of a command in Bellamy’s voice that makes Murphy want to obey him, but he can’t. Because if he looks at Bellamy, Murphy’s resolve is going to crumble, and he’ll tell him everything. About the Grounders, about their torture, about what they did to him at the end of the day that was somehow worse than the torture. No, Murphy can’t meet Bellamy’s gaze.

In a heartbeat, Bellamy grabs Murphy’s chin in a firm grip, forcing him to look up from the soil beneath him. And there’s everything that Murphy feared to see, cloaked in that stern gaze. Compassion, understanding, and worst of all, pity. In that moment, Murphy knows he has to make Bellamy uncomfortable, that it’s the only way he can come out of this with any shred of self-respect. Because when people don’t want to be around you, they don’t take the time to ask questions.

“Sorry, Bell, did I ruin the mood?” Murphy works his best sneer onto his face as he says it, and he receives the desired recoil as Bellamy drops his hand from his chin. Murphy doesn’t feel the sort of thrill he once had at making people uncomfortable, he just feels nauseous and angry at himself.

“You know I don’t care about that, Murphy.” Bellamy’s voice is low, his ‘serious’ voice as Murphy thinks of it. More controlled than his ‘motivation’ voice, and Murphy doesn’t want to hear it right now. He wants Bellamy to leave, to abandon him here with his memories.

“Oh, do I know that, Bell? Because the last time I thought I knew what you were thinking, or what you would do, I ended up fucking hung from a tree and kicked out into the woods.” There’s venom in Murphy’s words as he brings up the event that neither of them have talked about before. They didn’t talk about it when Murphy came back to camp, they didn’t discuss the matter the first time Bellamy got drunk with Murphy, realizing he wouldn’t judge or pity him for anything he said with a glass of moonshine in his hand. The cold loathing in Murphy’s tone as he broaches this topic isn’t directed at Bellamy, but at the action itself, and everything it caused. He had forgiven Bellamy, as much as Murphy forgives anyone, but the memory still pisses him off.

Murphy stands with a scoff, brushing dirt from his knees which doesn’t really make a difference, given how much detritus is clinging to him. He can feel the scrapes on his back now, but they don’t even hurt, compared to the phantom pains he had experienced moments ago. The scar around his neck throbs, and Murphy turns slightly away from Bellamy, so that he doesn’t have to face the look on Bellamy’s face. Because Bellamy isn’t getting angry with him, he just looks confused and slightly hurt.

“I was an idiot back then, but you _do_ know me now, Murphy. Things have changed. We’ve both changed.” There’s a hint of desperation in the last, as if it’s something Bellamy tells himself, but doesn’t quite believe in this moment.

“Have we? Fuck it, Bell, _can_ people ever change that much? We’ve tried to kill each other, for fuck’s sake.” He wants to walk away, but he would have to step over Bellamy, and his legs still feel like they might crumple if he stresses them too much.

Bellamy’s silent for a long time, and Murphy eventually has to turn to face him, if only because turning away from him had pointed Murphy towards wreckage rather than a clear exit path. Bellamy no longer looks like he’s pitying Murphy, instead he’s studying him. It’s the same look that Murphy loves to observe when it’s directed at ration reports or defense plans, but it makes him highly uncomfortable to have it trained on himself. He feels almost as if, given time, Bellamy will be able to look into Murphy’s past and see what he’s trying so hard to hide.

“Is that what this is about? What I did to you?” Bellamy’s lips quirk down at the corner slightly and he shakes his head a little with a squint of his eyes. “No. What is it, then?”

“This is about me not wanting to fuck you, and you not accepting that, Bellamy.” Another lie, but Murphy’s too far down this rabbit hole to back out now. He’s going to keep lying until Bellamy figures it out, or until his body recovers enough from the adrenaline crash that he can get out of here.

“That’s a lie and we both know it, so you might as well stop saying it.” Bellamy pushes himself to his feet, and suddenly it becomes a lot harder for Murphy to maintain his asshole facade. When he was standing over Bellamy, quite literally looking down on him, it made him feel queasy, but he could do it. But on equal footing, with Bellamy slightly taller than him, Murphy can feel his mask slipping. 

“Tell me what this is really about, Murphy.”

There’s the command in his voice, the reason he had become their leader when Clarke had left them. That alone makes Murphy want to comply, and it doesn’t help that he instinctively knows that Bellamy would understand. This is the guy who had spilled his darkest secrets to Murphy, in dim fire light with alcohol burning their tongues. Bellamy was the one who had listened to Murphy’s complaints and helped him, who had convinced the other delinquents to actually give Murphy another chance. There was no way Bellamy was going to judge him.

But the words don’t even exist for Murphy to say what he wants to say. How can he tell Bellamy about the things the Grounders had done to him, and why he might never be able to do more than kiss Bellamy without panicking? There aren’t words to describe the terror he had felt when they’d struck an alliance with the Grounders, albeit briefly, a fear he’d drowned by trading food for booze. Murphy would never be able to articulate the fact that he’d been so worried for so long about becoming an alcoholic like his mother, yet that came second place to his need to not think whenever the night was particularly dark, or someone mentioned the alliance.

“I wish I could.” There’s anger in that, because Murphy really does wish it, but he knows that he’s unable to. He shakes his head a little, drops his gaze, and steps past Bellamy, now confident enough to trust his limbs to carry him back to his sleeping quarters.

His shoulder brushes against Bellamy’s as he steps past him, and for a moment Murphy has hope that they can leave this incident now, and get on with their lives, at least until the next time he fucks it up. But then there’s a hand around Murphy’s wrist, feeling far too much like the ropes he can still remember every fiber of, and Murphy reacts. For some reason, instead of fleeing in fear, he lashes out. Perhaps his adrenal glands couldn’t fuel another panic stricken sprint, or maybe it was the fact that he was already more than a little mad at himself, and he wanted to turn that emotion outward.

Whatever the reason, Murphy spins to face Bellamy in a heartbeat, throwing his hand off with a rough gesture and shoving at Bellamy’s shoulder to turn the man towards him. He takes a step forward and pushes Bellamy back, hearing a loud clang as his back collides with the metal structure Murphy had previously taken refuge under.

“You really want to know, Bellamy? You really wanna fucking know why I can’t stand to have you touch me?” Murphy sniffs and rubs at his nose, feeling helpless against the emotions raging within himself. “It’s because they fucking tortured me. You know, when I told you I held out for three days? Do you want to know what happened on the third day? You probably don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway.” Murphy lets out a small, self-loathing laugh. “They let their warriors have me. Men, women, they didn’t give a shit. Anyone who wanted to use me as their personal fuck toy was free to. And every time that you touch me like that, I have to fucking remember each and every one of them, and every goddamn thing that they did to me!”

Murphy hears his own shout echo for a moment, his voice having raised to proper yelling without him really noticing. He takes a step back from Bellamy, chest heaving and heart pounding furiously, dropping his gaze before he can begin to notice what emotions Bellamy might be showing. He doesn’t want to know. Murphy turns away, and this time Bellamy doesn’t try to stop him after the first step. He almost wishes he would, that silver tongued Bellamy Blake would stop him and somehow find the words to make everything Murphy had gone through seem okay. But there aren’t any words that can do that, and Murphy walks into the darkness without anything barring his path.

```

Bellamy should have gone after him. Hell, he never should have let Murphy leave in the first place. But, like always, Bellamy let Murphy down, too frozen in his own shock to go and help an obviously hurting Murphy. Well, that’s another thing to add to the far too long list of ways he’s failed the guy.

“Shit.” Bellamy sighs to himself, sitting heavily in the dirt a few moments after Murphy disappears from sight.

He’d known that they would have to talk about their past at some point, but he always figured he would be the one to bring it up, and Murphy would try to laugh it all off, the way he always did at anything serious. But, then again, Bellamy had never considered the very real fact that everyone’s past these days clings to them like leeches, benign for the most part, but occasionally causing them pain in ways that no one else could understand. And the fact that, in a large part due to Bellamy, Murphy had suffered more physical trauma than any of them. And that often carries a large amount of emotional damage with it.

Bellamy curses the alcohol that still blurs the edges of his reason and logic, that had prevented him from reacting properly and stopping Murphy from running. He curses the fact that it made him bold enough to continue pushing even though Murphy clearly didn’t want to talk. That it had taken the edge off of his nerves and allowed him to kiss Murphy in the first place is the only thing he doesn’t regret, and even that is tinted with a negative lense, knowing what he knows now.

For a moment, Bellamy allows himself to wish that he’d never pushed, that he’d never found out. It would have been so much easier. But he knows that he can’t truly think that, that it’s a horrible thing to think, because even if he didn’t know, that still would have happened to Murphy. His knowledge of the situation, or lack thereof, doesn’t change reality. A dark, unpleasant reality that Bellamy had a hand in making.

Had he not known, when he left Murphy banished in the forest, that the Grounders would find him? Sure, he’d thought they would kill him, not torture him, but Bellamy hadn’t even felt bad for Murphy when he’d stumbled back into camp, bleeding and flinching away from everyone. He didn’t stop to really think about what happened to Murphy, and the part he’d played in it, it had always been so low on the crisis list as to not even be registered. But now he has to think about it, has to acknowledge it and figure out how to deal with it. Because he likes Murphy, and he wants to be with him, and they can’t be together with the way things are now.

Bellamy pushes himself back to his feet with a groan and makes his way back towards the main camp and the sleeping quarters. He’d been hoping, earlier in the night, that he might not have to spend the night alone with militia reports and supply lists in his quarters, but now he thinks that it’s a perfectly fitting way for him to spend the night. In the morning, he’ll have solved a few issues, if not the one that really matters, and he’ll be sober and ready to talk to Murphy. Or as ready as he’ll ever be.

Bellamy walks through the jagged metal maze of the crashed Ark station with ease, having mapped it out time and time again during the day. He almost wishes he were a little less familiar with it, because then maybe he would have to focus on his footing, rather than on what he’s going to say to Murphy. What can he say? “I’m sorry” just doesn’t seem to cut it in this situation. Bellamy groans and drags a hand through his hair in frustration, having no idea how to even approach the situation, let alone work through it.

Taking a shortcut, Bellamy skirts around the edges of the lively campfires, where delinquents and arkers share drinks and stories, getting along far better now that they act more like good allies, rather than the arkers trying to command the delinquents. Normally Bellamy would love to talk with those around the fires, picking up bits of information to help him lead them better, but tonight he can’t risk a conversation. He might share more, in his emotionally flustered state, than he would intend to. 

A twisted metal hallway leads to Bellamy’s room, half tent and half what once may have been a storage shed. A metal floor and canvas ceiling house a pile of furs that serves as his bed, stacks of notes scrawled in charcoal on any easily obtainable paper substitute, and a large section of log that serves as his desk. Less high tech than the Council’s rooms, but it suits Bellamy and his people just fine. 

Bellamy shuts out the light from the hall after turning on the small solar lamp that he’d obtained for himself, sequestering himself with the latest reports from his militia groups. He sits on his bed and reads Monroe’s small, concise report, recorded on a piece of bark and stating that everything is going fine with her squad. Same with Harper’s, Miller’s, and Jasper’s. No issues, nothing to give Bellamy a distraction.

It takes going through requests for resources, an eternally tedious task, to actually pull Bellamy’s attention. He loses himself in lists of items he has, items people want, and items people need. The scraps of canvas seem to blur together as time passes, and eventually Bellamy has to set them aside and resign himself to sleep. In the morning, he’ll deal with everything else. Bellamy drifts to sleep completely comfortable with that concept.

Of course when the morning does come, far too early in the form of a delinquent knocking on his door with a minor emergency, Bellamy definitely still does not want to deal with his personal problems. He throws himself into the business of leading the delinquents with slightly more focus than he does most days, not that he ever neglects them, but today he doesn’t even stop to eat, simply munching a ration pack as he moves from one “crisis” to the next. None of which really require his attention, he could have delegated them to almost anyone, but he justifies not thinking about what he’ll say to Murphy later by being single-minded in his handling of the day.

Bellamy keeps up his blind pace until the evening sets in, the more populated day shifts swapping out for the smaller, more skilled night shifts. Everything except for the biggest emergencies are handled by Monroe in the night, and Bellamy finds himself without anything to do, save for go to get his dinner, sit at a campfire, and actually talk to Murphy. He hopes the words will come to him then.

The moonshine next to the rations is exceptionally tempting, but Bellamy passes it over. He needs to have his wits about him, can’t risk his emotions getting the better of him and causing him to mess things up with Murphy. Again. He turns away from the bright metal tins of alcohol, selecting one of pure water instead, and scans the gathered people, looking for one face in particular.

Bellamy finds Murphy easily enough, seated by himself and staring into the flames in front of him with nothing in his hands but a cup of booze. There’s no sign of rations anywhere around him, no tray or packaging, and Bellamy knows that he couldn’t have finished them and cleaned up yet, Murphy’s always the last one to put his dishes back. Bellamy chokes down the bitter feeling that he’s the one responsible for the fact that Murphy’s by himself, getting drunk, and hurting in ways that no one can truly understand, and walks over to him.

“This seat taken?” Bellamy asks, trying a smile and dropping it in a heartbeat.

Murphy doesn’t respond, but he also doesn’t protest when Bellamy sits next to him, so Bellamy counts it as a win. He wouldn’t have been too surprised if Murphy had threatened him over the action, knowing that the younger man doesn’t have the healthiest way of dealing with his emotions most of the time.

“Listen, Murphy, about last night-”

“Don’t,” Murphy cuts Bellamy off, his voice rough, never looking up from the fire, “Just leave it alone.”

“I’m not going to do that. This isn’t something we can just ignore and hope it goes away,” Bellamy insists, placing his small dinner on the log next to him and leaning forward to study Murphy.

“Maybe “we” don’t have to. Maybe this isn’t a “we” thing,” Murphy says, monotone and emotionless, at least on the surface.

“Listen, Murphy, if you don’t want anything to do with me, I understand.” God, it hurts Bellamy to say that, “But I can’t just leave this alone. I have at least a part in the fact that this happened to you, and that’s my fuck up to fix. I fucked up more last night by letting you walk away, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have stopped you, and we should have dealt with this then.”

Murphy looks up from the fire then, slowly turning his gaze on Bellamy. There are dark circles under his eyes, and Bellamy wonders if he’s slept. He also wonders if the redness around his eyes and the roughness of his voice is due to the smoke or something else.

“You really think that this,” Murphy taps on his temple slowly, “can be fixed?”

Bellamy holds Murphy’s gaze, wanting to convey his sincerity as best he can. He needs Murphy to believe him, because even if he can’t be with Murphy like he so desperately wants to, he can’t leave one of his people hurting this much. 

“I don’t know,” Bellamy answers honestly, “and maybe there’s nothing to fix. But the least I can do is to try and help you.”

Murphy is silent for a while, simply staring at Bellamy with a disturbing calm before dropping his gaze and his chin to look at the moonshine clutched in his hand. Bellamy follows his eyes and sees that Murphy’s hand is shaking slightly, his knuckles stark white in their grasp.

“I’m afraid.” Murphy’s voice is hardly more than a whisper, and he doesn’t look up at Bellamy, but Bellamy knows that it’s easier to share truths like this when you’re not watching for reactions, “All the time. I’m afraid of them, and of the memories, and of the fact that you’re going to find out how fucked up I am and you’ll throw me out into the forest again. I can’t go back there, Bellamy.”

“I’ll never do that again, I promise.” Bellamy hesitates for a moment before reaching out and placing his hand over Murphy’s, steadying it. He can’t help but notice Murphy’s slight tensing before he relaxes and accepts the light touch, “You don’t have to be afraid of that anymore.”

“Even if I’m too fucked up to be fixed?”

“Even then. I’m never going to stop trying to help you, Murphy.”

Murphy raises his face and meets Bellamy’s gaze again at that, and Bellamy can see unshed tears in Murphy’s eyes. This is probably the most honest that Murphy has ever been with Bellamy, not throwing truths hand in hand with sarcasm and glib comments. Bellamy sees the strength it takes for Murphy to talk to him like this, to let Bellamy know his honest thoughts, and he finds him all the more beautiful for it.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” In that is the voice of a little boy who was betrayed by the system put in place to protect him, who has never had anyone to look out for him. Bellamy faces it with a nod.

“And I’ll make sure that you believe it, too,” Bellamy responds.

Murphy studies Bellamy in solemn silence for moment, a small creases between his brows as he considers something. Then he leans in and presses his lips to Bellamy’s, light and hardly more than a heartbeat of a kiss, but when Murphy pulls away, he’s not looking at Bellamy as if he’s a monster. Bellamy simply holds himself still, glad that he might still have a chance and desperately not wanting to fuck it up, or to hurt Murphy.

“It’ll take a long time,” Murphy says quietly after a time, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to… A lot of shit happened to me, and I know that you’re different than them, but part of me doesn’t realize that there’s any difference between now and then.”

“We’ll take as long as you need, and be as different as we have to be. It’ll be okay, Murphy,” Bellamy pauses for a moment before adding, a vow to Murphy and a reminder to himself, “You’re safe.”

And for now, holding Murphy’s hand as he eats his rations is enough for Bellamy. They’ll work through everything else in time. Tomorrow, maybe. There’s always tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the second day of Ficmas! I’m uploading 12 brand new one shots for y'all to enjoy (3/day, one for each of my major fandoms each day from the 20th to the 24th)
> 
> This is a prompt I got so long ago, and I ended up getting really anxious over it because so many people were expecting such great things from it, and I was afraid of letting them down, so I just let it die for months. But I finally finished it, and I hope y’all like it!
> 
> [Etra](http://coldsaturn.tumblr.com) is the best editor on the planet and I love her so much for editing all these for me!
> 
> Come spend the holidays with me [on tumblr!](http://jonnmurphy.tumblr.com) And thank in advance for reading/commenting/leaving kudos <3


End file.
